Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grass Sandal | 2004 | Richard Helms | Buy |
| 2 | Cordite Wine | 2005 | Richard Helms | Buy |
| 3 | Brittle Karma | 2020 | Richard Helms | Buy |
| 4 | Doctor Hate | 2021 | Richard Helms | Buy |
The Eamon Gold series by Richard Helms features a San Francisco private investigator working cases in the tradition of Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald, and Robert B. Parker. Gold is a hard-boiled detective navigating morally complex situations in a city with a long literary association with the genre.
The series began in 2004 with Grass Sandal and ran to Cordite Wine in 2005 before Helms shifted to other projects. He returned to the character with Brittle Karma in 2020 and Doctor Hate in 2021, bringing the total to four novels. The two later books were published close together and represent a renewed focus on the character after a fifteen-year gap.
Brittle Karma won the Shamus Award for Best Original Private Eye Paperback in 2021, confirming Gold’s place among the better-regarded private eye series in contemporary American crime fiction.